THE SOUND OF MOONLIGHT – Sensing the Pulse of a Late-Summer Night

I’m inspired today by naturalist Jim Gilbert’s column in yesterday's Minneapolis Star Tribune. It’s about crickets, specifically the ones whose effervescent chee-chee-chee chorus bejewels these precious late-summer nights.

RIBIT OR CRICKET?
I’ve wondered about crickets my whole life. Not that I’ve done much about it. Mostly, as with so many of Nature’s ubiquitous small wonders, I’ve come to take their amiable background music pretty much for granted. I should do better.

One question I do ask myself is, is this really crickets I’m hearing, or might it be tree frogs? Here in east-central Minnesota, though spring peeper frogs sound quite similar to crickets, they generally sing only—as the name suggests—in the spring or early summer. Crickets are harbingers of late summer.

There’s also a difference in the quality of sound emanating from the two singers. Frog voices are a series of smooth notes ranging from sharp, bell-like dings to longer whistles, each one rising slightly. Cricket chirrs, on the other hand, because they're produced by rubbing its upper, serrated wings rapidly together, have a high-pitched grating quality and maintain nearly the same tone throughout each note.*
        House and field crickets are known
        more as soloists than choristers.

Another question: are these night-chorus crickets the same ones folks are used to finding in their homes? You know, the stocky mostly black or brown ones thought by many to bring good fortune? Not likely. Those are either house or field crickets known more as soloists than choristers.

The most common of our night-singing crickets here in the Twin Cities is the snowy tree cricket. They’re delicately built and mostly green.

             Listen to the Snowy Tree Cricket Sound

PART THERMOMETER
Snowy tree crickets definitely sing en masse—though just the males. With their individual songs blending into what sounds like one pulsing strain, it’s hard to tell whether there’s dozens or hundreds of the critters…or just one really big one.

Tree crickets are the ones thought to gauge the air temperature through the rhythm of their song. (Just count the number of pulses in 13 seconds, then add 40 to find the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. By the way, I tried this last night and they were spot-on!)

    Here is a tweet we can—and must—believe.

Enough with the phenology. Though the facts are fascinating, I’m also moved by the intangible qualities of this summer-nightly cricket chorus. The peacefulness. The poetic possibilities. The reassurance, with this sweet sound’s constancy in my life, that somehow everything must be okay. That perhaps there is still hope for my own species…for this world.

And, certainly, as sinister forces do their damnedest to render suspect so much of what we once knew to be good and true, here is a tweet we can—and must— believe. If we're to save this precious planet from ourselves, we must notice tiny creatures like this, know their names, care about their well-being.

So are you as moved as I am to tune in your senses to cricket sounds? Why don’t we listen first to the whole ensemble, then zero in on one individual, track it down and shine a flashlight on it. Say hello to this incredible little performer. Thank it for the constant reminder of Nature’s astounding, eternally fragile beauty.

Let’s do it tonight!

   If moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like (crickets).
     NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

* Cricket song is a result of stridulation, an insect’s rubbing particular body parts, called stridulatory organs, together to produce sound.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – 101 Tips

TIP #10 

Feel the pulse of a hot summer meadow.

Late summer afternoons, the meadow is a shrill cacophony, a population of buzzing, whining, whirring beings.

And, like any city, this one emits one common, unifying sound, a kind of pulsing, sizzling energy. Can you hear it in the meadow, this heartbeat of life?

How May Flies...For a Mayfly

When you live for just hours, you'd better make that time count. And that's exactly what adult mayflies do. Hatching from gilled water nymphs, they do nothing but fly, mate and die.

I've seen millions of these elegant sprites in my lifetime, from one small soul landing on my lapel, to blankets of them clinging to the leeward sides of cabins, to corpses piled so deep on a bridge that it took snowplows to clear them away.

But, you know, there's always a way to see even the most familiar thing in a fresh, new light. 

Recalling one of my favorite tricks for spotting small wonders, I decided to ignore the swarm and focus on just one individual.

My brother and I were canoeing in northern Wisconsin the past couple of days.
One evening, just after sunset, we were standing and admiring trees' black lace reflections on the still, gilded water.

I happened to look up, and noticed hundreds of mayflies hovering silently just above our heads. At first, they seemed to be moving randomly about. But, recalling one of my favorite tricks for spotting small wonders, I decided to ignore the swarm and focus on just one individual.

PHOTO: Joe Petersburger - National Geographic Stock

Wings ablur, my fly would lift straight up five or six feet. Then his wings would suddenly come into sharp focus—stopping, not together in their resting position, but spread out to the sides—and the little guy would parachute straight back down to where he started.

We looked around, and just about every other mayfly was doing the same thing, bobbing straight up and down, over and over. We figured it must be some kind of mating ritual.

The composite wisdom of thousands of 
generations has taught them the best chance 
of landing atop Ms. Right.

Come to find out that there is, indeed, a method to the mayfly's madness. It's just the males bobbing up and down, not to show off their prowess, but simply to cover more ground—air, that is.

Evidently, the composite wisdom of thousands of generations has taught
them that, when you mate in mid-air, this affords you the best chance of landing atop Ms. Right.

Oh, what you can learn and marvel at when you look at things—
even things you thought you knew well—in new ways!

COUPLE O' BUGS – Zihuatanejo Snaps

I found this ornate creature climbing a young palm's trunk this morning. Bristles on bristles and elegant white spats to boot. My instinct was not to touch him even if I wanted to -- would you?
Turns out he is indeed highly poisonous when touched, according to my friends here who know more about local critters than I.

I thought this was a walking stick...until he flew! He resented the intrusion, turning, staring and springing right at my lens. Anyone besides him know what he is?
If you said a praying mantis, you're right -- one of some 2,200 species of mantodea found worldwide in temperate and tropical climes.